Announcing Missions 2.0: SCN Gamification Redesign

This post is to inform you about changes in our mission design, effective today.

As you know we have had extensive game mechanics on SCN for almost a year. When we launched in April 2013 the community liked the “new experience” and enjoyed completing challenges and earning badges. These SCN badges represent interest, activity and topic expertise, and they can even help give you a sense of people’s personalities. Some of them are serious while others are just for fun – although it’s true that we have more of the serious badges, being a professional community. Badges can be a way to say “congrats” or “thank you”, but most of the time they provide motivation to do certain things: contribute original, valuable content and demonstrate behaviors beneficial to the community.

Why changes?

You may want to refer to the list of SCN missions for better understanding of the details that follow.

The changes are based on 10 months of monitoring, observing and listening to community feedback. When we launched last year we expected to continuously improve our initial design. Iteration is a key aspect of gamification.

The goals of these changes are the following:

Continue to reward (and hopefully encourage) quality participation as judged by the community

Encourage behaviors that are beneficial to the community, such as answering questions correctly, participating in discussions and writing thought provoking blogs

What changes?

We are removing the prerequisites of some of the onboarding missions and changing points awarded for certain missions. We are also making small changes here and there such as removing the repeatability of the “Pay It Forward” mission.

Accountability:

We want to make people accountable to produce original, high quality content. We also want to discourage any point cheating or copyright infringment. Therefore we are introducing penalty points that result in overall points reductions when blogs and documents are rejected as part of an abuse report (submittedvia the “alert moderator” link). Removing points from members who repeatedly ignore moderators’ advice should encourage them to try to improve.

Additional measures will be taken for anyone having more than 6 pieces of content (blogs and/or documents) rejected.

Blog, document, and discussion mission adjustments:

The feedback we received was that the quality requirements were not high enough. We are changing that for the progression missions “I Blogged!” through “Super Storyteller” and “I shared knowledge” through “Super Tutor”.

We also decided to make certain descriptions more vague so that people spend less time pursuing points and badges, and more time engaging with the community and providing helpful knowledge on SCN.

Super Answer Hero, Super Storyteller and Super Tutor are now hidden missions. The badge is more of a “reward” badge than a motivation badge, meaning that members should not be worrying about how difficult it would be to achieve.

Also, and this will interest a lot of the discussion forum users, we are introducing a new mission beyond “Super Answer Hero” which will be a surprise for now. Let’s see who gets it first 😉 We felt that it was needed to add a mission in the progression to harmonize our point economy across all our asset types and recognize the amount of effort needed to answer a lot of questions, sometimes without getting feedback from the community. By doing so, we give discussion forum contributors the opportunity to earn just as many points as a blogger or document contributor would.

What next?

We hope you find that these changes provide a better experience in the community. As always, we will observe and make adjustments as needed. We will listen to your feedback and measure the impact of these changes in terms of mission completion, quality of content, and overall community satisfaction.

Adding too much restrictions on earning points will discourage regular participations in discussions. Specially I personally feel that there is no motivation to participate in a discussion for majority of the members if they are not earning points while participating in discussions, no matter their answers are marked correct/helpful or not. Points can be reduced to a minimum but it should not be totally abolished.

There are cases where you answer a question correctly but it is not marked correct/helpful by the thread creator. I have seen lot of cases where a person raise a question, get the answer and does not close the thread by marking the correct answer. In a way, person who have replied with correct answer is loosing 10 points. Why not to give a though to award such people with 10 points? There is a need to take these cases also into consideration.

I think you misunderstood something, there is no change to the points for helpful and correct answers in discussions, there is as well no penalty in discussions. Only the points for Likes got removed a month ago since they were subject to massive points cheating. I had added an evidence in the comments to the announcement.

The user who asked a question is responsible to close it, I know this does happen much too less.

Expecting others to say “thank you” (closing the discussion -assigning correct answers) for this unthankful member is from my point of view a wrong approach. As an active moderator I know the people in my forum, and I send direct messages to remind them to close discussions. It is up to them to do it, it is up to you if you continue supporting those unresponsive people .

By the way “not getting 10 points for a right answer” is much different to “loosing 10 points” , enjoy sharing knowledge and forget this point thing as motivation.

Years ago we had a limit of 10 open question, this actually forced the people to close their questions, which usually turned out in marking replies as helpful and correct.

There is an idea to get this back – support this idea to increase the pressure:

Thanks Jürgen L for your response. Limiting number of open discussions may be a solution but I think at the same time there is a need to educate new members on this issue as mostly such threads belongs to them and they hardly understand the importance of marking their threads closed.

Apart from this, the process of reminding such creators should be automated and an email can be be triggered automatically in case a thread is open for a week or more. I hope this will reduce lots of manual interference from moderators specially sending emails to individuals for closing a thread is tough task.

I personally feel that there is no motivation to participate in a discussion for majority of the members if they are not earning points…

That is a pity you feel that way.

My approach has been to actively participate in the communities where I have experience. I started answering questions 12+ months ago in the GRC community at a time when there wasn’t a lot of content being produced or questions asked. My thought was if I join in and start answering questions then others will flock to the community knowing they can get valuable information (I hope). I have observed some of the members asking questions a year ago are have become regulars in answering the questions. I have also noticed an increase in new members as companies start to move to the new GRC version or consultants have trained in the product.

The human nature element of “what’s in it for me” has never been about the points or badges. Where I know I will benefit is when I have an issue, I can rely on the community to remain active and be in a position to help me. The active participation of others further helps me through ideas and discussions that I have been able to incorporate into my designs.

There are cases where you answer a question correctly but it is not marked correct/helpful by the thread creator.

You are right here and as a community we need to encourage each other to respect proper etiquette. I’m now taking the approach if a person has a tendency to ask heaps of questions but not close the threads I stop helping. When they advise their issue is resolved I politely ask them to close the thread. I do not ask them to mark me as correct or award points but close the thread – they have the options of choosing assumed answer. Either way, they learn and other see what the correct answer was. As more people start to close out threads others will observe the expectation as well (this might be wishful thinking but I can only hope).

+1. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us so eloquently, Colleen Lee! I agree with everything you wrote, and it’s nice to hear about you noticing people answering questions today when one year ago they were asking the questions. This means that they are learning on SCN and this is the best reward for us managing this community 🙂

I wasn’t really your reply carefully enough and thought you were attacking Mohd. My apologize. I think the fact that the points system being here somehow promoted many people’s desire to win more points and badges. I believe as much as us members benefiting from the forum, the forum is growing due to member’s activity like what you did over 12 months. Regardless of whether your initiative is getting points or helping others, your contribution should be recognized.

Moderation is subjective, and for cases like ‘wrong space’ and ‘improper formatting’, a moderator may reject the post directly instead of instructing the OP to move/correct the post.

It all depends on rate of incoming alerts and success rate of direct rejection vs instructing the OP.

A person who spent 2 months enduring the pre-moderation tries to create blog/documents after reaching 40 points. Naturally there is incentive for first blog as well as first document.

He may post 1 each in a single day, only to see both getting rejected, and him getting downgraded to below 30 level.

On the other hand, a person with 4000 points won’t feel high percentage loss even if 40 points get deducted.

Yes, pre-moderation is there for newcomers. I have alerted several articles created by newcomers with reasons like plagiarism, and the articles that initially passed pre-moderation review were rejected when seen from plagiarism point of view.

Consider a post with email address at the end, or endorsement of a company, or same content posted by OP on his personal website.

I guess rejecting a post from the user-interface is easier as compared to rejecting alert, editing post, notifying OP and alerter separately.

Increasing penalty is fine.

Exponential rate of increase is dangerous.

The penalty does not have “cool-off” period. This is dangerous.

In games, a person starts with 100% power level, and it slowly decreases when the person looses blood. There is usually a way to get back to 100%, either by resting or by consuming power packs.

Similarly, when a person stands to loose 80 points for next rejection, there has to be a way to redeem himself by either cooling off for say, 2 months. The next penalty amount could be decreased gradually by good “community service”, like correct replies to questions.

I logged in to SCN after a week and I’m really happy to see the changes. They are much required. Though I haven’t reached the levels of those Super badges but it’s good to see removal of PIF mission. I guess, that was misused miserably.

I’m not sure about the Penalty points stuff 😕

This would surely eliminate the unnecessary noise and we all would think, and double check before posting it. That’s all I can think of it at the moment.

Another thing which I liked is the removal of figures. Now you cannot see how much you need to do to earn that badge. Instead, More is perfect. I remember this was discussed in a thread around a month before and I’m really happy to see this change. I feel like my vote is counted 🙂

It seems the changes made the Super Answer Hero mission disappear from the list of missions to be completed. I had it at about 70% complete, now it’s nowhere to be found. I understand that there is a hidden mission beyond Super Answer Hero but it shouldn’t affect the visibility of the pre-requisite mission, or?

As one of the changes for Missions 2.0, we decided to make all of the Super missions hidden until earned, but it looks like we neglected to include mentioning that for Super Answer Hero in the blog post. Perhaps Laure Cetin can take a look when she gets a chance.

The fact that the mission and its requirements are hidden probably means, that you should not know the requirements to actively pursue them, but that you earn it as a by-product of your (good) participation here on SCN.

Overall, a good idea, but with caveats. I admit to some concerns about the penalties for blog rejections. I agree that we want high quality, informative, and original blogs and documents. We want them to add value, not just noise. A mechanism to encourage community members to contribute quality and not just write whatever comes to mind in order to have a blog post and some points is a good idea.

My concern is that, while as a whole the moderators are excellent in what they do, there is a lot of power for abuse if a moderator is, shall we say, a little too critical. There are moderators in certain spaces who leave me a little cold in their published responses to some discussions, and who are, I think, perhaps a little quick on the draw with the rejections or admonishments. The vast majority of the moderators are very good, highly thoughtful, people for whom I have the utmost respect. But this fear of overly critical moderation may be holding some people back from publishing blogs who might otherwise have valuable things to say.

It has held me back. I’ve never been ‘moderated,’ to my knowledge, and I don’t really expect to be, but I admit to a nagging worry every time I post that I’ll cross some unseen boundary that will be enough for someone with the rejection authority to push that button. Someone will think I didn’t search for enough hours before asking a question, because they were able to find some obscure, years-old thread with arcane search terms that I couldn’t find, or that I shouldn’t have answered a particular question because they don’t like the OP, or that my blog post is not formatted properly or what-have-you. Illogical fears, hopefully, but this is how the human mind works.

I’ve been a member of SCN for 10 years. I recently put out my very first blog post. Apparently it went completely unnoticed, which is ok, because admittedly it was a bit of a niche subject (my hope is that a year from now someone will find it useful). In fact, I don’t even think there is a moderator for the space, which is odd, as it’s a big space. Anyway, I’d like to do more, but again, there’s this hammer out there, waiting to fall at the whim of any of a number of moderators, many of whom I don’t know.

Moderation is a good thing. Encouraging quality content is a good thing. I even think penalties for repeat offenses are a good thing.

But what checks and balances are in place to assure us plebeians of some recourse if we feel we have been moderated unfairly? I assume there’s some method of appeal, but in the few discussion threads I’ve noticed where a member has complained of the moderation, they have been treated harshly, or at least peremptorily.

To the moderators among you who are reading this, please understand that I do not mean any disrespect. Quite the opposite, in fact. You are volunteers, working in your own time for no recompense, doing an important job. 99% of you are excellent in the decisions you make, and we are a stronger community for it. For the 1%, I’m probably misunderstanding and lacking access to all the facts. But even perfect bodies of judges in courts of law provide a means of appeal to their litigants and defendants, because that is the check and the balance that encourages a fair result.

I can understand your concerns, Matt. I have similar concerns when posting a new blog or document, as I even have to fear retaliation.

The moderators making the (almost) final decision but they are in many cases not anymore the starting point, this has changed in the last months, more and more users care about good content and click the alert button.

But honestly the hammer does not swing that low like it sometimes looks when somebody complains about a rejection in the Support space.

The problem is that you then only see a little piece of the whole story. You usually cannot see the rejected content, you do not know the history of the user, if it is a first or a repeating case, you do not know what happened in direct message conversations. And you do not know what happened on that day in general in the forum. So we are often only defending our decisions, explaining it in a way to make it understandable for others who are just reading this complaint and we avoid to get all on the table to give the poster a chance to escape without losing his face.

The normal blogs and documents are not the target for rejections and penalties. But it happens quite a few times that

still SAP help gets copied and a few screen shots are added,

that someone just writes a single line

that same blog is posted in several spaces,

or posted once as blog and again as document

that a successful document is more or less copied, explaining the same story just for a different field e.g. in case of mass change transaction, and in case of conditions in a calculation schema.

that a document has already several typos in the subject, not to count the errors of the content.

plagiarism and copyright infringement

and yes some end user documentation – step by step picture books – for well known processes that existed already in R2, which are well explained in help.sap.com and where you have plenty content in SCN already

and last but not least posting untruth.

This is what I have in mind for this measure, and I believe the majority is far away to be affected.

1. every moderator take your bullet points as a guide line before rejecting the content. I’m sure most moderators do, since most of them are very experienced and had the heart to serve the forum. But posting these rules would help the authors to stay away from punishment.

2. If a posting is rejected, there should be an appeal process. What if a moderator just had a bad day so he rejected the post that he would not reject on a better day? After all we are all humans and emotions does affect our behavior.

3.Apparently some rejected content will have different initiatives from others. Do we deduct points for all of them? or we treat them differently depending on rues listed above? Like in your bullet points number 23457 would be much more serious than 168, do we give the same penalty to them?

I believe these are the questions to think about before enforcing the rule to all forums.

I guess if more moderators would follow my bullet points then even more content would be rejected than actually is.

The rules actually have all these points, more polite than a German (me) can express them… but maybe less clear.

We have an appeal process, you can read the complaints regularly in the SCN Support space, like today.

We moderators are not really in the position to deduct points or to give penalties, we can reject content, the point thing is then an automatism.

I certainly agree about the bad day, I would lie if I say this does not happen. But it does not really lead to injustice, only to a stronger stance for the next violation.

There are some days where 3 different people reopen solved discussions to add new questions or even new answers, and I am just writing a direct message to give some guidance when 2 or 3 frequently asked questions get posted which need immediate action. At the same time you receive another discussion which does not belong to your space, and while you want be polite and move it to the right space, the rejected question from a few minutes ago gets reposted.

What I just wrote is not fiction, It happens every week. If I had just one or two rejections a day I would be happy, but with an average above 10 it is not really fun, especially if you want maintain high standards and give proper reasons and guidance.

But we are mixing things.

The penalties got introduced for the above explained reasons, not for the daily forum discussions. I rarely reject documents during my working hours as I need time to go through, to read and validate the content, to check for plagiarism and redundant content. Probably 30 minutes effort for one document. Some are easy to judge, for others I send a mail to my 4 moderator colleagues and ask for their opinion before any action is taken. Okay, I take some action, I inform the poster that we are talking about his content and explain the reasons. This all takes then another good portion of time. So finally we have 5 moderators looking at one document and spending our time.

Maybe I am an exception, but it is not a split second decision for me to reject documents. It just sounds so if you read about the rejections from the OPs point of view.

The rules actually have all these points, more polite than a German (me) can express them… but maybe less clear.

exactly. I don’t mind whether the rule is strict or loose, as long as it is very clear for others to follow. there are only three points on when a content will be rejected in the rules of engagement. Points-cheating; Defaming another member; Copyright infringement. This is not as clear as your bullet points, neither did it cover everything within the guidelines that you use to reject contents. I think those rules needs to be clearly made not just to moderators, but more importantly to the members. The truth is, I searched on what can be posted as blog, what can be posted as document, and even if I followed the three points above, my content might still get rejected.

I believe this new policy has a very good reason to launch, it is probably aiming to reduce the contents that are obviously spam. On the other hand, most people expressing concerns here are probably thinking about how this would affect the small portion of members who wanted to post something they believe is useful but moderators don’t.

I’ve never had content rejected so I don’t know the process from that end. Do you get an opportunity to contact the moderator for clarification? I’ve seen a number of questions from posters here in About SCN and other spaces asking for such clarification so I’m guessing not?

Previously, when all you lost was the points from the content, having things rejected I guess wasn’t a big deal. If the rejection was in error you could just post again. Now that there are penalty points there really needs to be a way to challenge a rejection and have it reversed – have the penalty points restored. Moderator rejection is a bigger thing now.

I like the penalty points idea for repeat offenders. I do think, though, that the first rejection should be free (and maybe the second). As a new member of the community, how would you feel if your first attempt at a blog is rejected and you lose points as a result? Getting that first content out there is a big step and most of us don’t get it right first time. It would certainly discourage me, especially knowing that if I get it wrong a second time I’ll lose even more points.

How about if the penalty points only apply once your have more than, say, 50 points already? Does that make sense?

That’s a good point, first rejection should not have any penalty that really discourage the newbies. We need to understand that the user who is creating his first blog may not be aware of rules of engagement and result in creation of blog that violates the rules (even not understanding that there is a penalty).

I’m sorry, but you can’t always bring up that the poor, poor user maybe doesn’t know about the rules of engagement and therefor can’t be punishable for his/her actions. This is a professional platform and if you didn’t just stumple on the internet by accident, you should know that there are ALWAYS rules on every webpage where you can interact.

If you want to post content, IMHO it’s the duty of the member to inform him/herself about the rules of the platform. “Didn’t know” can’t be an excuse. “Didn’t understand” is a different thing, but then you should ask for clarification before you start contributing.

This is just an argument that is not valid in a professional forum like this. We are not children. Everybody here can read. The rules are very easy to find and if you don’t find them yourself, because the SCN can be a bit confusing at first, you can still ask where they are so you can inform yourself.

Puh, so… rant over.

Nothing against you Midhun, I hope you know that. 🙂 This thing is just a big thorn in my side and I needed to voice my opinion so very much.

I don’t understand why do people make it so complex . I am not talking about the gamification redesign . These are welcome changes . I am talking about those who think that this is not going to work.

Reading some of the above comments, i can simply put my rant in simple words :

1) If you are here in SDN for points, and you like earning points. Then go and play a video game and earn points there.

2) If you are worried about other posting for the first time and they’ll get lost in this SDN jungle . Let them do a mistake and realize it. Anyhow there is no such rule in the new gamification redesign which suppresses creative and new content . Instead it encourages. I don’t see why it is so difficult to understand.

Can I add, that we all learned to walk by falling down and bruising our knees a few times.

If peopel are points gaming and cheating (which there has been a lot of since we launched gamification) then losing a couple of points will reinforce the message that we are not here to play points games. We are here to help each other.

I want to say that Laure Cetin and I thought long and hard about whether and how to introduce penalty points, whether to give a “free pass” for the first and maybe even second violation before deducting extra points, etc.

A major factor that played a role in deciding against a “free pass for first rejected content” is that most people writing their first blog on SCN do not yet have enough points to be out of moderation, so they are unlikely to post a blog or document that violates the RoE because their first post has to get approved first anyway.

In addition to that, we made the first deduction for a violation very small: only minus one point! It’s enough for someone to take notice and figure out they may need to change something or pay more attention to the rules, but it really doesn’t damage someone’s point total or hit that hard.

We hope we found a good balance between supporting new bloggers and making sure the rules are being followed.

Now we need to give this model a chance and watch the results over the next couple of months. As Laure mentions in the blog, mission design is an iterative, responsive process, so we expect to tweak things again as we go along.

Perhaps the Rules of Engagement should be required to be read under one of the “getting started” badges. Not the blogging or documents mission.

Then you can make it required that the 3 getting started missions have to be completed before you can post a blog or document. This would ensure we know for a fact, they have at least opened the Rules of Engagement. (It doesn’t mean they read them).

My bad Laure, I see it’s in the second ready set go mission. I checked the two beginning ones and the first ready set go mission. I missed checking the second one. The problem with it being on the blog and document mission is that you don’t have to read it before posting a blog or document. It’s concurrent with posting.

It’s a shame you can’t make a mission required before posting. That would help I think.

Please create an option to opt out of gaming in scn if people dont want to participate in point making schemes.

+ Option to pot out of gaming (no points positive or negative).

+ Opt out / disable lifetime points.

+ Disable levels

gamification creates a false sense of competition and people are simply encouraged to post more and more content in hope of earning points which may or may not be relevant. It also increases the requirement of more and more moderation and with SCN saturating with solutions and searcheable solutions in SCN.

There are too many conditions in SCN nowdays and moderation is at its peak. With policing of every posts made on SCN people would think a lot of times before posting on SCN in fear of rejection even if its useful.

Its like the moderators are in a killing spree.. “oh.. you posted another useless post (i dont like it) i will make you pay for it with your lifetime points for wasting my time”.

Sorry but I have to disagreee, if you don’t care about the points then doesn’t matter if you score positive or negative, right? An incompliment will lead your post/blog/whatever get rejected if you are in gamification mode or not.

BTW looks like you have some issue with one moderator so will be better if you try to solve it in another way, I can understand how you feel because once one of my blogs was rejected too and I had the feeling of “man what an ***..” but was one time I posted numerous blogs and no one was rejected anymore, moderatos are persons too or at least is what I believe 😀

That’s what I meant, you are not forced to gamification, gamification is something which IMHO has at least two objectives: 1- encourage people to be more participative, 2- Make SCN more fun. You can hear about personal brand, more points = easier to find a job, free towels, whatever… but why are you SCN what you want to give and what do you expect is only up to you, it’s like chocolate cookies.

1. there is never a rule posted on scn specifically stating what information can be posted as document, what information can be posted as blog. the approval and rejection process is not really clear to members, adding this penalty rules might create more unpleasant emotions and promote a discouraging atmosphere. With all my respect to the moderators, we have to admit that even different moderators have different opinions on whether something should be approved or not. let along the opinions between the author and the moderator if the author does not know the guidelines the moderator is following. One way to enhance the policy is probably adding Mr. Jurgen’s bullet points to the rules of engagement.

2. I agree 100 % with the penalty idea, but I reserve my opinion on how this new policy will work. There is a difference between someone who copies something online, post it just for points, versus someone who just spent hours documenting something that he just figured out, and either post it as a blog or document.

Personally I did post some basic knowledge back then and it got rejected. Now I look back, it probably should get rejected. But I searched on the rules of engagement before posting it so that I can follow the rules. I thought I did, later it got rejected and I got confused. I posted that document not hoping to just get points, but I definitely don’t hope to deduct points now with this new policy. I think it is fine to reduce or limit the amount of documents so that members can pay more attention to the better stuff, but on one hand, it is okay to disapprove some contents, but those members who tried to contributed shouldn’t be punished in my opinion. On the other hand, clear rules about what can be posted as document or blog should be added to rules of engagement as well.

okay… I’ll take the bait and bite (good thing my bite is less than my bark and my bark is barely a whisper).

I can’t agree too much with you feeling pity for Mohd

that’s not what I said. I said it was a pity he felt that way not that I pity him for feeling that way – quite a big difference in meaning and interpretation.

Sitting in the high land of moral standard and criticizing others isn't friendly in my opinion

Are you accusing me of that or generally stating that’s what you believe happens on this community? I

I guess that’s also why you accepted all those missions and won all the badges.

How did I accept such a thing? I answer questions, help others where I can and join in. Those rewards and points are a by-product for which I have near-zero control. The only control I have is to choose to participate or not; participate with quality of not; or for each piece I do, create a new user account so my point balance remains low and prevents me from meeting the requirements of those missions and badges.

You don’t need to promote yourself or judge others.

Did I miss something on this one too? I’m feeling pretty judged by your statements and had to read them a few times to remove a feeling of being attacked here.

I get you wrong, I apologize. I thought you were despising Mohd for wanting points. As I stated, points are not the drive that I post or replies, but the fact that the point system is established here probably promoted many people’s desire to win more points and badges.

The point system is a way of recognizing people’s contribution to members. As much as members benefiting from the forum, the forum grows with members contribution. If someone is contributing and helping others, regardless of what his initiative is, he’s contribution should be recognized, rather than despised. I wasn’t reading your post carefully enough and thought you were attacking him, again, my apologize.

Good post indeed, but I would like to suggest to have some batch for penalty even.

It will create a negative image and it should be awarded by default to offenders, probably it will help us to reduce useless documents.

Also, if I can add some thing about Discussions,

Let me first accept that litters and garbages should not be allowed in this section at any cost, but quite a few time I have found moderaters to be a bit harsh.

Some times it happens that there are preexisting thread for the questions newly posted but they have not been succesfully replied in either of the existing thread. In this scenario moderator considers the new thread as duplicate and then deletes them.

Here I have a request, please do not delete them, let it be answered by some experianced mentors in SCN. By this way even if we are not getting direct answer but there posts helps us to find out the solution.

At the same time, delete the duplicate post if it has already been answered somewhere and put harsh penalty over the thread owner, may be deduction of 100 points or so.

SCN is a great place to learn and thanks a lot to all of you for helping all of us.

Yes, not only 90% but all the questions can be answered by reading existing threads and documents, but we are not smart enough to get the things on the first gaze. It is there we need direction and guidance from seniors like you. We never expect the complete solution, we just need the direction. It is how the freshers survive.

Its fine, any body should not break the rule, asking some basic or simple question is a different thing, here one asks help and guidance from some seniors or mentor, but if some one is posting a silly Blog or Document, he tries to port him self as a mentor or guide.So, silly activity can’t be expected from guide.

I will never mind, if I am commiting a nuisance and points are getting deducted. I believe SDN is not a place for gathring points, its a place for learning and sharing. I feel extremly happy if some one marks my answer as helpful.

I have got a lot to learn here from seniors like you, Suhas, Matt, Rob and others.

Yes, the reason why we haven’t introduced penalty points in the Discussions area so far is that we didn’t want to remove points from people who may have no points at all. But there is no such thing as negative points lifetime on SCN so we could still do it, we will need to advise with time.

Giving a “badge of shame” is a decision that should not be taken lightly, and we are currently not interested in doing this. When we introduce badges we try to anticipate all the negative consequences and currently we see too many negative aspects to having a badge that shows the bad behaviors, we prefer gamification to be about achievements and expertise.

Also, I will refrain from commenting about moderation in the discussions because this is not my area of responsibilities and it has been discussed in About SCN and SCN Support already.

Yes, I described the issue in detail. Said there were multiple people with the same name (i.e one name, three likes, all registered today), and the moderator still “approved the content”.

I usually don’t “report” publicly what I think is bad moderator behaviour but this is so “strange” I don’t have a clue what was the reasoning of the moderator. I found it odd that 5 “MMForum posts” got onto the SCN front page at the same time, so I went to check the likes. Unsuprisingly, I found the situation reported.

I recently join SCN and today only new about this. For new comers this is kind of motivation factor. Creation point should be deduct, that’s true. But while maintaining the quality it should motivate members to share their knowledge. Yes Manish Kumar new members might need few years to earn points but within few days points will be lost.